Secret Kitchen menu, 18th June 2011
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Feta, olive, tomato & mint skewers
Merguez meatballs with charmoula yoghurt dip
Turkish pizzette spread with sucuk sausage meat
with herbs, pomegranate and lemon
Butterbean, tomato & chorizo salad with sherry vinaigrette
Wild rice, broad bean and spinach salad with pomegranate molasses
Grilled courgette, asparagus & halloumi salad with basil dressing
Roasted red pepper, tomato & mozzarella salad
Cherry clafoutis
Coffee, teas and homemade cherry liqueur
About tonight’s menu
Our menu was inspired by sausages we have encountered on our travels and tried to recreate at home – merguez in Morocco (lamb with beef fat, flavoured with warm spices, rose petals, rose water and garlic), sucuk – pronounced ‘sujuk’ – in Turkey (beef with a little lamb, flavoured with allspice, cumin, garlic and sumac), and chorizo in Spain (pork with plenty of fat, paprika, chilli, garlic and a touch of anise).
The little Turkish pizzas are called lahmacun – pronounced ‘lahmajun’ – and are traditionally covered in fresh herbs and lemon juice before being rolled up and eaten almost like a wrap. Sucuk sausages are usually eaten for breakfast, fried up with eggs, but we have used sucuk sausage meat in place of the usual lamb pizza topping.
The salads are four of my summer favourites, and feature organic vegetables from Riverford Farm. I recently put most of them on the menu for one of my weeknight Cooking Club classes and they went down so well I had to make them again tonight.
Special thanks go to Victoria Moore for loan of her watermelon martini recipe, which we also made (several times…) during our How to Drink in Summer classes this week. Crush several cubes of watermelon in your cocktail shaker with a pestle, add 50ml vodka and a load of ice, shake well, taste and add sugar syrup if needed, then strain through a fine mesh into a martini glass. Fantastic.
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